


circles

by miuyi (rainiest)



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-25 06:30:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20719661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainiest/pseuds/miuyi
Summary: The drive from Sydney to the Gold Coast is ten hours but it'll take a whole lot longer if Wonwoo keeps going around in circles like this.





	circles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [acrazyworldofdreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/acrazyworldofdreams/gifts).
  * Inspired by [A joke full of romance](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12836838) by [acrazyworldofdreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/acrazyworldofdreams/pseuds/acrazyworldofdreams). 

> To acrazyworldofdreams: thank you for the opportunity to remix you, it was a lot of fun going through your works and i hope you enjoy!
> 
> Thank you infinitely to the mods for their kindness and patience

There’s a movie Wonwoo watched a long time ago. The opening sequence ended with a man talking to himself in a suburban street at sunrise, and started something like this:

Three friends were sitting on a porch. Two of them were drinking beers and one, because he had the palate of a toddler, was drinking a guava-flavoured vodka Cruiser. It was barely dusk and still blazing hot. This summer was going to be a bad one: no rain and hard desert winds. In January a national park three-hundred kilometers away would raze to the ground and for weeks Wonwoo would smell smoke whenever he stepped out the front door.

“Seungcheol’s engaged,” Mingyu said. He was looking down at his phone, which rested on his thigh. “It’s on Facebook.”

A long pause. The bulb hanging off the wooden roof beam zapped as a mosquito flew into it and died.

“Shit,” Soonyoung said. “I mean that’s great, but holy _shit_.” He tipped his head back and downed a third of his Cruiser in one go. “Guys, we’re old.”

Wonwoo watched the condensation roll down the neck of his VB and didn’t say anything. Above their heads, another mosquito died.

In April they received their invitations in the mail and Mingyu said, “Gold Coast? We can totally drive that, right?”

Half an hour of research and one group chat later, it was decided. The fourth seat in the car went to Minghao Xu, an international student Mingyu had been inseparable from since they met in the introductory Engineering lectures. And the last seat—

“Who?” 

“Jerry Wen,” Soonyoung said, hunched over his laptop on Wonwoo’s bed. “At least that’s what his name is on Facebook.”

Mingyu looked over, frowning. “Yeah, that’s him. I don’t think anyone calls him that, though.”

Six months later they’re standing on the street at dawn, tetris-ing suitcases into Mingyu’s dad’s Range Rover so they can carefully drape the garment bags holding their suits over the top. Minghao is dressed in a head-to-toe neon yellow tracksuit that’s probably designer and more expensive than Wonwoo’s laptop. The morning light seems to hit him and multiply. The asphalt around him and the side of the car glow yellow. 

Jerry Wen is wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and he doesn’t glow. In the comfortably ambiguous accent that comes from years and years at international school he laughs and tells them, “No one calls me that, though. It’s Jun. Junhui if you’re really angry at me.” 

It’s September and the mornings are still cold. In the treetops the Mynah birds’ cries are already ear-splitting and they won’t stop until sundown. A breeze animates the leaves in the gutter across the street. 

“Hey,” Wonwoo says, “doesn’t this remind you guys of that movie?”

The car roars to life. When Wonwoo turns around he realises everyone has already piled in. All but one of the doors are closed. Music floats out from inside, and the others are laughing at something as they put on their seatbelts, and Wonwoo is standing on the street outside, talking to himself.

“So,” Soonyoung begins in a tone that can only mean trouble. Gravel crunches under his sneakers as he slides up next to Wonwoo.

“Please don’t, I’m not interested.” Wonwoo is too tired for this. He spent the drive from Sydney falling in and out of sleep in the backseat, wrist numb from propping up his chin. When he woke up they were pulling into this rest-stop and the mid-morning sunlight was splintering like broken glass somewhere between the sky and his eyes. It’s been five minutes and no matter how many times he blinks it won’t put itself back together.

“Why not?” Soonyoung asks. “He’s a pretty good-looking dude, right?” Wonwoo follows his gaze to where Jun is squatting beside Minghao at the other end of the carpark, cigarette balanced between his fingers.

“Did we only invite him so you could set us up? Because I’d resent that,” Wonwoo replies, which is true and also lets him avoid admitting that Jun is indeed hot.

“Of course not,” Soonyoung says. “It’s just a happy coincidence that he’s into dudes and single.”

None of this is news to Wonwoo. Though he’d never actually met Jun before this morning he’d known of him, and knew that his long-term relationship ended a few months ago when the guy graduated and went back to China.

Minghao says something that makes Jun laugh. The hunch of his shoulders is shaking with it. He doesn’t have a loud laugh; Wonwoo can’t even hear it from here.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Wonwoo says. 

Soonyoung wiggles his eyebrows. “It could.”

At the other end of the carpark, Jun stubs out his cigarette on the asphalt.

Wonwoo once heard that the sun shines differently down here, holes in the atmosphere or something. It's only September but the sun is baking the dashboard and his bare arms and the leather seat. In the driver’s seat beside him, the skin over Mingyu’s collarbones has already started to go pink.

They pass Minghao’s phone around to take turns queueing songs. Soonyoung exclusively selects songs from the Shrek 2 soundtrack. Whenever Wonwoo twists in his seat to give the phone to Jun, he passes it straight off to Minghao. “It’s cool,” he says, “I’m good with anything.”

Outside the windows, countryside flicks by measureable only in fence-posts. It’s hypnotic if Wonwoo stares at it too long. The winter was as kind as that summer had been cruel; the fields are the greenest he’s ever seen them.

They stop at another rest-zone, and again in Coffs Harbour at dusk. As they walk the main street trying to choose what to eat for dinner, the others drift ahead. They’re distracted but still in earshot when Jun says to him, “They’re trying to set us up, aren’t they?”

Interesting. Wonwoo hadn’t realised he had a bold streak. “Yeah,” he says. “That kinda pisses me off. Does it piss you off too?”

Jun laughs even though Wonwoo wasn’t trying to be funny. “Not really.” 

Maybe his unexpected boldness is making Wonwoo want to outdo him. “Are we gonna make out at some point this weekend just to appease them?”

Wonwoo was actually trying to be funny this time but Jun doesn’t laugh. Instead he looks at Wonwoo, consideration crossing his face. “Maybe.”

Interesting, Wonwoo thinks again.

At the end of first-year Wonwoo, tired of shitty first dates and making excuses, made out with Jeonghan Yoon against the kitchen counter at a houseparty. After that, at least he was going on shitty first dates with people of his preferred gender.

Jeonghan, who Wonwoo never did go on a date with, also happened to be Seungcheol’s best friend and for some reason was heavily involved with the Chinese Students Association despite the fact that his passport was Australian and his parents’ were Korean. Through that he’d taken Minghao and Junhui under his wing, and by extension under Seungcheol’s too.

The rest of them had known Seungcheol almost as long as they’d known each other; he was the grade above them all through high school and everyone knew his name, even people from other schools, which made him a pretty big deal at the time. He was always nice, though. For a while he volunteered for maths tutoring sessions after school and all but carried Wonwoo, head buried too deep in books to get it around calculus, through eleventh grade maths.

In university he was a year ahead of Minghao and Mingyu in Engineering and ran in a lot of the same social circles, so instead of drifting into obscurity like most high-school figures do after graduation Wonwoo started seeing a lot more of him. Maybe he’d taken all of them under his wing. He seemed to do a lot of that.

Then Seungcheol graduated and moved to Brisbane to take a job offer. In an almost impossible stroke of luck considering the job market, his law-graduate girlfriend received one there too. Six months later Wonwoo was sitting on Mingyu’s porch drinking a beer while nine-hundred kilometers away Seungcheol was proposing to her, and there’s nothing much else to be said about that.

They reach the hotel at nine in the evening after getting lost around the Queensland border. There are two twin rooms between the five of them so Wonwoo and Soonyoung share a double bed to save someone fucking up their back on the couch.

“Sorry,” Soonyoung says. They’re lying on their backs in bed, listening to the shower run through the bathroom wall. “About the Jun stuff.”

“Oh,” Wonwoo says. “No, it’s… I mean yeah, it’s a bit annoying. But it’s fine.” They hear Mingyu drop the shampoo bottle and swear loudly. “I don’t think he likes me much anyway. He never laughs at my jokes.”

“What, seriously? But he told me he thinks you’re funny,” Soonyoung says. “He came up to me and said, “Wonwoo’s a funny guy, huh?” His exact words.” 

“Really?” Wonwoo frowns.

“Yeah,” Soonyoung says. “Anyway, sorry.”

Beyond the sound of the shower running, Wonwoo can hear the thick kind of silence that only comes with sleeping somewhere unfamiliar. “It’s fine,” Wonwoo says, and he means it. “Really.”

Wonwoo can hear Soonyoung think into the gap in the conversation. It stretches out for five minutes, ten. Mingyu must be jerking off in the shower.

“If it’s not that,” Soonyoung asks finally, “then what is it?”

Wonwoo is facing the wall, his back to Soonyoung, so when he doesn’t say anything Soonyoung probably assumes he’s fallen asleep. He definitely doesn’t assume that Wonwoo lies there staring at the wall for a long time, even after Mingyu gets out of the shower and goes to bed, even after the traffic on the street below goes completely quiet and the wall begins to fracture like a sky that he’s been looking at for too long.

Seungcheol greets them at the door of the church, hair swept back, hands clammy and smile blinding. His brother is there and so is Jeonghan. He keeps leaning over and muttering things to Seungcheol that make him laugh whenever he gets too quiet or pale, which is probably why Seungcheol picked him as his best man.

“Thanks so much for coming, guys,” he tells them, hugging each of them as they file in. “Really, means a lot.” Wonwoo is last in line, and Seungcheol stops him with a hand on his shoulder-pad.

“You’ve always been my favourite, you know,” he says, grinning. It’s a beautiful morning. The sun finds the contours of Seungcheol’s face like it was made for him. “Don’t tell the others, but you are.”

The ceremony is beautiful, and Seungcheol’s wife is beautiful, and his voice starts breaking as he reads his vows which is so beautiful it makes Soonyoung cry. It’s all so beautiful that during dinner Wonwoo has to go stand outside in the corridor and stare at his shoes for a while. After some time he looks up to find that Jeonghan has joined him.

“Won’t you be missed?” Wonwoo asks.

Jeonghan shrugs. “Maybe. Let them miss me.”

They did make out that one time and peripherally ran in the same social circles for years but they’d never been particularly close. “You didn’t come out here to talk to me, though.”

“Nah, sorry,” Jeonghan says. “I do like you, though. Not as much as Seungcheol does, but I do.”

“Thanks, I think.” Wonwoo scuffs the toe of his shoe against the floorboards. “Then why did you come out here?”

Jeonghan laughs, loudly and like he doesn’t really mean it. “You know why, Wonwoo,” he says. “That’s why you’re Seungcheol’s favourite. You notice things like this.” He thinks for a moment. “That’s probably why I’m his favourite too.”

Jeonghan still lives in Sydney but Wonwoo hasn’t seen much of him since he graduated eighteen months ago. He looks a lot more tired than Wonwoo remembers. More handsome than he remembers too, but so, so tired.

“Yeah,” Wonwoo says, “I guess I do know.”

Jeonghan nods, tight around the eyes. “So we’re gonna stand out here for a minute and not say anything, and then we’re both gonna take a deep breath and go back inside.”

“Sounds good,” Wonwoo says, and they do just that.

Wonwoo doesn’t remember much of the plot of that movie he watched a long time ago, but he does remember that the main character was in love with this girl from high school. She got engaged a few years after they graduated, and he attended the wedding and smiled through the ceremony, then went back home and sat on the end of the bed with his head in his hands for a long time. It was beautifully shot. Wonwoo remembers that much. The light spilled over the bedsheets like water. You could see the man breathing but you couldn’t see his face.

Soonyoung must have heard something in the silence last night or seen something in his face during the ceremony. He goes to grab Wonwoo’s hand in the taxi, stops himself, looks at Wonwoo with the saddest eyes. “I get it now,” he says. “I get it. I’m so sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Wonwoo says, even though there’s something hot and tight in his chest reminding him that it does. It could be worse. At least he’s not the best man. “It doesn’t matter.”

“I really liked you,” Wonwoo whispers to the wall that night, when Soonyoung and Mingyu are dead asleep. “I really, really liked you.”

He falls asleep and dreams about failing his maths exam, and sad beautiful men in tuxedos, and wings so big they can protect everyone from everything.

The drive home is quieter, partially because Minghao has a killer hangover, and partially because going home is always less exciting than leaving it. 

They stop again in Coffs but take it slower this time, walk along the harbour and take breaks to sit on the grass for the sake of Minghao, who is pale and clutching a water bottle. Soonyoung sticks close to Wonwoo and visibly bites back the insults he would usually sling his way, which really is sweet of him. 

They load up on snacks and decide to drive for as far as they can. Five hours later they pull into the same rest zone just outside Newcastle. Mingyu runs into the trees to take the piss he’s been complaining about for an hour. Minghao is fully unconscious in the backseat, and Soonyoung is charging his phone in the front. On the other side of the carpark Jun is squatting in that same spot, smoking. Wonwoo goes and sits on the rock beside him.

“I think you’re cool,” Jun says. It wasn’t that dark when they pulled in five minutes ago but dusk is falling fast. The cars on the highway all have their headlights on. Just as Wonwoo thinks about texting him to suggest it, Soonyoung reaches up to turn on the light inside the car.

“Thanks,” Wonwoo says. “I think you’re cool too.”

Jun, Wonwoo has now realised, doesn’t possess a bold streak so much as it possesses him. “Isn’t this the part where we decide to try it out? See if there’s something between us?”

“Probably,” Wonwoo says. He watches the smoke seep out of Junhui’s lips. Watches his eyes as they watch him. 

Then he stands up, brushes his hands off on his shorts and goes back to the car.

That night, after Mingyu does laps around Sydney dropping them all off, Wonwoo tries to draft a text to Jun.

_Sorry,_ the first attempt reads, _I was kinda rude today. I never meant to_

_You really are cool, _goes the second. _Idk why I feel so_

_I think if we actually got to know each other we wouldn’t like other, or at least you wouldn’t like me. Isn’t that how it always_

_Maybe I have this idea in my head that it needs to be perfect. Like a movie. Maybe I’m just not cut out to handle the imperfection of reality. If we tried it together we’d have to face those imperfections and I_

_I think part of me knew I’d never have Seungcheol. Maybe that’s what made it so easy to want him. Maybe that’s the closest thing to the real thing that I’ll ever_

Wonwoo wakes up the next morning with his phone lying beside him on the pillow, battery dead. When he goes downstairs no one else is up but the TV is on, playing some old movie. The tiles are ice-cold against his feet and the morning light is still thin and the birds are already loud. 

Wonwoo picks up the remote and switches the TV off.


End file.
